One Secret Summer (28 page)

Her sharp retort took him by surprise. He was about to say something when she suddenly walked off in the direction of the
toilets. ‘Hey!’ he called after her. The rest of the group stood by uncertainly. ‘
Hey!
’ She ignored him. He turned back to the other three, who were regarding him silently, their faces sallow with fatigue.

‘Should we … should I follow her?’ Nancy Shore asked nervously.

‘No. Just put
your
headscarf on.’ He strode off after Miss Niela Aden, his early morning calm rapidly disappearing.

Inside the building, his eyes dimmed, adjusting to the light. The lounge – if it could be called such – was full of soldiers
and construction workers. He looked towards the toilets, momentarily nonplussed. He wasn’t used to being ignored. Where the
hell had she gone? Suddenly a female figure emerged from a doorway to his left. He blinked in surprise. Gone were the jeans
and thin tank top that made her look as though she were off to Ibiza for the weekend. Instead she was dressed in a full-length
pale blue
dirac
, the loose, diaphanous garment that unmarried women in Djibouti usually wore. She looked indistinguishable from any one of
the hundreds of women he’d passed every day – if you didn’t look too closely, that was. Even in her
dirac
, her delicate beauty was hard to hide. He wasn’t the only one to have noticed either. A group of French soldiers were staring
open-mouthed at her. He suppressed a small gesture of annoyance. A beautiful young woman at Camp Lemonier was the
last
thing he needed. He turned on his heel and walked back out into the sunlight. The others were still waiting uncertainly for
him.

‘Right. Let’s get a move on. It’s about a half-hour drive to the base. The car’s over there. You’d better sit in front,’ he
said to Nancy as they picked up their bags. She was twice the size of anyone else. Within five minutes of driving off, however,
he wished he’d stuffed her into the boot instead. She settled herself into the seat like an old hen, clucking in consternation
at every
goat, shepherd or nomad they passed in a cloud of dust. He was peripherally aware of Niela Aden, who sat directly behind him.
She kept her face turned to the landscape but every now and then their eyes met in the rear-view mirror. Hers were black and
inscrutable. The rocky desert slid past on either side in uninterrupted swathes of earth and dust. In front of him, the line
of mountains dissolved slowly into the sky. Behind and to the right, stretching away towards the horizon, was the sea. Humps
of bare-backed brown islands broke through the surface, a sandy blonde fringe here and there … and then everything faded into
the hazy silence.

NIELA

Djibouti, December 1996

Through the swollen convex dome of the window, the silky blue fabric of the sea tilted gently from side to side as the little
plane touched down. Niela’s face was pressed flat against the glass. She was back in Africa, back home. The dusty brown mountains
scored a jagged line across the horizon before disappearing into the haze. There was a brief announcement in Arabic, French
and English and then the plane juddered to a halt. The doors were flung open on to an afternoon already filled with heat.
Niela unfastened her seat belt and stood up. There were six other people on the flight from Addis – three of them were co-workers,
sent from different offices and departments in various capacities to assist on the same project. The others were official-looking
men in suits. What, she wondered to herself as she hauled down her backpack, could bring a man in a suit to this part of the
world?

She followed the others off the plane, holding on to the
already hot metal handrail for support. It had been a long journey – two and a half hours from London to Rome; a six-hour
wait at Fiumicino followed by an eight-hour flight to Addis Ababa and then a changeover into a small plane for the final leg
of the journey to Djibouti. Her legs felt wobbly as she stepped once more on to solid ground. They walked across the blistering
tarmac towards the collection of small buildings that was the airport, most of them gasping in the heat. ‘Oh, my,’ drawled
the tall, overweight blonde who’d introduced herself as Nancy as they drew level with the man who’d clearly been sent to meet
them. ‘It’s the Marlboro Man.’

Niela followed her gaze. Standing in the shadow cast by the remains of a fluttering sunshade was a tall, lean man, dressed
in jeans and a faded T-shirt. He was holding a small cup of espresso in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. As they
drew near and Nancy pushed her way forwards, he tucked the cigarette carefully behind his ear in a gesture that brought the
men at home sharply to mind. In that part of her brain that still noticed such things, she slowly took stock of a dark, wild
beauty. He was olive-skinned, with intense eyes that flickered over them all in turn, coming to rest on her with a momentary
flicker of impatience. She looked up into his face; in the bright glare of daylight, she noticed that his eyes held hair-thin
splinters of hazel sunburst in the iris, like lights left burning in a room. He was full of light; it emanated from beneath
the surface of his skin, spilling out of his pores. She looked away, momentarily taken aback. She’d never seen anyone like
him. When he spoke, his words were clipped and terse. The impatience she’d read in his face was there in his voice. ‘It’s
a Muslim country,’ he said sharply, once the introductions had been made. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed.’ She felt her hackles
rise immediately. Did he think her stupid? She turned away from him and marched off, not wanting to cause a scene. When she
came back, dressed in her
dirac
, she saw she’d angered him further. She felt a sneaky pinprick of triumph. It surprised her. She’d barely spoken three words
to the man and already there was an undercurrent of animosity between them
that she’d never experienced before, with anyone. She climbed into the back of the vehicle, leaving Nancy Shore to sit next
to him. She kept her face averted, studying the landscape – every now and then, however, their eyes bumped and met, sending
a spark of an unknown, electric emotion flowing through her. By the time they drew up outside the camp, she was thoroughly
and completely unsettled.

The camp itself was sparse – a few whitewashed bungalows overlooking the sea, a slightly larger one-storey building that was
the office and a collection of what must once have been servants’ quarters at the back. There was a yard with a drying line
strung between two poles and an outside sink. Josh led them to one of the bungalows. ‘You’ll all be in here,’ he said, pushing
open the door. A narrow corridor with rooms leading off to one side and a mosquito net door that banged to and fro with the
wind. ‘I’ll get that fixed,’ he said, looking up at the hinges. ‘They’re all the same. Pretty much standard camp fare, I’m
afraid. Toilets and showers in here.’ He pushed open a door to show them. ‘There’s a small kitchen at the end of the corridor,
but most of the cooking’s done in the main building. You’ll find a fridge and maybe a kettle, but not much else. Let me know
if there’s anything you desperately need.’

Niela looked around the room he’d shown her. It was small, with a single bed and a mosquito net tucked up around its frame.
There was a rickety desk in one corner with an old chair whose stuffing had spilled out of its seat. She put her rucksack
down on the ground and walked over to the window. She could hear Nancy’s complaints through the half-open door.
There’s no bedside light? Where can I get a pair of heavier curtains? We have to share the bathroom? No way!
She listened for Josh Keeler’s response – there was none. It didn’t surprise her.

At dinner that evening, Josh was nowhere to be seen. Niela sat with the others, listening with half an ear to their rambling
mixture of complaints and anecdotes, and surrendered herself to the sounds of the night. The cicadas were a soft, slow murmur;
the occasional high-pitched squeak of a cricket or an owl pierced the blackness; once or twice the harsh, staccato bark of
a dog. The night sky was a thick lid, so close to the ground it enveloped them. She pushed up the sleeves of the
dirac
, enjoying the sensation of heat on bare arms that was particular to tropical Africa, the seamless merging of the body in
space that occurs when internal and external temperatures match; no awareness of the world as separate from her skin. The
woman who cooked for them was an Afar, one of the nomads of the region. If she was surprised to see a dark-skinned, Somali-speaking
face amongst the foreigners, she didn’t show it. As soon as she was able, Niela excused herself from the group and walked
back along the corridor in the semi-darkness. She stripped off her clothes, switched off the light and lay down on the bed.
The fan circled lazily above her head, sending an occasional waft of marginally cooler air across her body. Within minutes,
despite the unsettled nature of their arrival, she was fast asleep.

In the morning, a piercing bar of sunlight came to rest across her eyelids, forcing her awake. It was hot in the small room;
she was uncomfortably aware of the sheet sticking to her body. She picked up her watch – it was just after 6.30 a.m. She pushed
the sheet aside impatiently and got out of bed. She wrapped her
kikoi
around her, grabbed her washbag and opened the door. The corridor was silent and empty. She padded barefoot along to the
bathroom. She showered quickly, dressed and headed back down the corridor towards the dining room.

Josh Keeler was sitting at one of the tables on the terrace, reading a newspaper, when she walked in. There was no one else
about. He looked up briefly as she entered, nodded curtly but said nothing. She poured herself a cup of coffee and slid into
a seat at one of the other tables. She looked out across the flat, empty plains towards the sea. From their position halfway
up the mountain, everything was laid before them. Presently, one by one, her colleagues began to emerge from their rooms,
looking, if anything, worse than they had the night before. ‘The heat,’
Nancy muttered weakly as she collapsed into a chair, mopping ineffectually at her brow. ‘I just didn’t think it would be so
damned
hot
.’ Niela caught Josh’s incredulous expression and quickly glanced away. She didn’t want another reminder of the electricity
that flowed over her every time she looked into his face. She made a quick mental note to steer clear of him, at all costs.
There was an impatient, flammable anger welling under his skin, like oil beneath the surface of the earth. She sensed it and
feared it simultaneously. She wanted nothing to do with it. She would do whatever was necessary to get the job done, nothing
more.

Although she’d irritated him when they first met, by the end of their first couple of days working together, Josh was forced
to admit there was more to Niela Aden than met the eye. She was good at her job, for one thing. She had a calm stillness about
her that defused tension even before it arose. By the time they’d wound up negotiations for the supply of masons and carpenters
for the first phase of the job, she’d won everyone over, even the grumpy tribal elders who’d viewed her with outright suspicion
as soon as she approached. A woman? And a young, beautiful one at that? But she knew exactly how to handle them, a curiously
deft mixture of deference and – dare he say it? – flirtation. She teased them a little, flattered them when necessary and
put her foot down when she felt she had to. He watched her, slightly unnerved. It certainly wasn’t his way – he was used to
giving out commands and orders and was baffled by the stubborn resistance he’d encountered amongst these men. They were different.
They listened to him with polite disinterest, their eyes anywhere but on him, and as soon as he was out of sight went back
to doing things their way, not his. He’d been in Djibouti almost two months and to his immense frustration had achieved little.
He couldn’t understand it. He hadn’t even been able to organise the men into work teams. There seemed to be no end to the
number of people he had to consult before anything could happen. This one’s uncle, that
one’s father-in-law, this one’s cousin … the village chief, the headman, the elders, the clan. Christ, he’d worked in Bosnia
with Mafioso of every description – Chechen, Bosnian, Russian, Moldavian … and somehow managed. But here in Djibouti, he was
baffled. He was unable to solve even the simplest problems because he just couldn’t anticipate them. Niela Aden’s arrival
changed all that. She moved amongst them with ease, as if she’d been there all her life. In a way, she had. As he watched
her work, it struck him again and again how arbitrary most of the borders in this part of the world were. French Somaliland
had turned into the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas, which in turn had become the Republic of Djibouti. They were
the same people, give or take a line in the sand or two. No wonder she looked as though she was at home. She was.

On the Friday at the end of their first week, just as he was walking back to his room, he came upon her sitting on the low
wall of the abandoned bungalow overlooking the sea, where he’d noticed she sometimes went at the end of the day. Without intending
to, he found himself walking up to her. The sky was losing its searing whiteness and the rocky desert in front of them was
beginning to turn blush-pink. Out in the Gulf of Tadjoura, the waters had stilled. The sea was stretched taut, pegged here
and there to the islands. A group of labourers they’d just been working with suddenly unrolled prayer mats and bowed their
heads towards Mecca. He stopped for a moment to watch them rising and sinking, the soles of their feet a dusty yellow as their
prayers rose up around him, a collective groan of supplication and release, their words carried away on the wind. He moved
on, towards her. She turned as he approached, but said nothing. He caught it again – that curious mixture of calm and energy
that emanated from her whenever he was near.

‘How long have you been doing this job?’ he asked suddenly. He noticed she waited until the men had finished praying before
replying.